34 Background of Work and Study in Public Health 



correcting evils in prisons and almshouses. In English prisons, 

 infirmaries and medical care had been provided for the sick 

 Rooms were required to be regularly cleaned and ventilated, walls 

 and ceilings scraped and whitewashed, and generally such 

 measures had to be taken " as would tend to restore and preserve 

 the health of the prisoners." ® It was part of an era of providing 

 better treatment and care for the indigent and helpless ill; and 

 toward this end more public hospitals were built. Similar reforms 

 were needed in America, but not to the same extent as in the older 

 countries. For example, such a requirement as to eliminate under- 

 ground dungeons was rarely applicable in prison reforms here. 

 There were, however, some conditions in need of amelioration; 

 and on one of these — proper ventilation — Erwin Smith spoke at a 

 sanitary convention held in December 1883 at Ionia. ^ He said: 



Those who have carefully examined our poorly ventilated State prisons 

 have repeatedly had demonstrated to them by the sense of smell, if not 

 otherwise, that the upper layer of air in a room occupied by large bodies 

 of men become soonest charged with foul emanations. In sleeping wards 

 where cells rise above each other in from three to five tiers, the impurity of 

 the air, as shown by the sense of smell and general feeling of oppressive- 

 ness, increases as one ascends from one gallery to another, until, towards 

 morning, on the uppermost gallery near the ceiling, the stench and oppres- 

 siveness of the air becomes almost intolerable ; and this, too, in spite of the 

 fact that in our State House of Correction, at Ionia, numerous openings 

 have been provided in the outer walls near the floor for the express 

 purpose of ventilation. It is also true, as I know by observation, that 

 prisoners who sleep in ranges of cells near the ceiling complain more of 

 headache, have less appetite, and eat considerably less food than those 

 sleeping in cells near the floor. From these considerations I think it is 

 apparent that a room cannot be properly ventilated by simply making an 

 out-door opening at or near the floor. 



This was not said as part of a formal address, but in discussion 

 which followed an address on "Ventilation." 



Smith's hours on duty at the reformatory while a guard were 

 from one o'clock in the morning until one o'clock in the after- 

 noon. At night he was on duty along the cell block and in the 

 mornings when the prisoners went to breakfast he went on the 



^A Pioneer of Public Health, op. cit., 3-5 (quoted address by Dr. Sedgwick on 

 " The rise and significance of the modern movement for public health "). 



" Supplernent to the 12th Annual Report of the Sec'y of the Mich. State Board of 

 Health for year ending Sept. 30, 1884, report of convention in part prepared by 

 assistant secretary Erwin F. Smith. 



